by HP Mallory
He’s no lover. He’s a murdering, backstabbing bastard!
That last outside thought rattled inside my head and I gasped as I wondered how it got there. I maintained my rhythm and satisfied noises so as not to concern Alaire but my mind continued to reel.
Get out of my head, I screamed internally, feeling foolish that I was basically arguing with myself… or was I?
“Are you happy, my queen?” Alaire asked in a monotone but bemused voice. Despite his movements, there was little to no strain in his words. Did he suspect anything…?
“Yes, please take me!”
Alaire sat up, wrapping his arms around me and flipping me over onto my back, his erection never leaving my opening. I moaned as he humped me faster and harder.
Gouge his fucking eyes out!
That damnable voice again!
I tasted Tallis’s blood, which was curious since my mouth was so dry.
Something was clearly not right. My heart raced at the implication of what was happening to me. Alaire appeared none the wiser, continuing to thrust with wild abandon. His breaths grew shorter, his movements quicker. I glanced down and noticed his eyes were on me, and he was studying me. I had to snap out of whatever ill-timed trance had overtaken me if I wished for him to stay ignorant.
“Harder, my king!” I screamed, as I reached my hand up, wrapping my fingers around his neck and squeezing. Alaire’s eyes widened and bulged as I cut off his circulation.
“Come on, you bastard, harder!” I spat as I tightened my hold around his neck. The shock of my words and actions left me stunned but the fire within me continued to grow all the same.
This isn’t me, I found myself thinking as I exploded from the inside out, screaming in orgasmic pleasure. Alaire quickly orgasmed as well, thrusting forward one last time as his muscle spasmed inside me. I closed my eyes, savoring the wave of euphoria now coursing through my body.
And then something happened. Just like that, I was transported. As if a foreign landscape suddenly dropped down in front of my closed eyelids.
“Lily?” a choked voice called from what seemed very far away. I found myself on a beach, surrounded by green. Green skies, green earth, green water, a castle on a jut of land covered in green lichen and moss.
“Lily?” That foreign voice again.
That’s not my name, I responded.
The wind shifted and the grass swayed in response. At my feet, a woman was covered in mud but clearly naked underneath the wet dirt. She was immobile. I studied her for what seemed like forever before my eyes found hers. Her emerald eyes were filled with hateful fire. I glimpsed a wrath that shook me to my core.
“Lily?”
The name jolted me back and I opened my eyes to a red-faced Alaire. My hand still squeezed his neck. My nails were digging into his pale skin, drawing his immortal blood. The droplets stained the bedsheets and my fingernails.
“What did you just call me?” I demanded, masking my fear in anger.
“Only what I knew would snap you out…” Alaire struggled to say the words. He didn’t fight me though. “Of whatever was so distracting you.”
I released my hand from his neck and looked at my fingers as though they were someone else’s.
They are someone else’s!
I ignored the nagging voice, instead choosing to focus on Alaire’s strained face. He abruptly sat up and withdrew from me. I reached for him but he ignored my outstretched—bloodstained—hands as he began cleaning himself off anew at the wash basin.
I was taken aback by his sudden foul mood. Until recently, Alaire, for all of his coldness, was always a surprisingly warm lover. After our union, he liked to hold me, planting small kisses on my neck and face in our mutual post-coital bliss. Though I could not explain why, these actions had the uncomfortable side effect of reminding me of my former prison.
“Are you feeling well, Alaire?”
His back to me, he stopped buttoning the fresh shirt he pulled from the armoire. “But of course, my fiery majesty.”
“You seem…”
“I have too much work to do now to dawdle any longer.”
Alaire turned around to face me and he was all business—calculated and cold. I had to hold myself still to keep from physically being taken aback by this sudden change in his demeanor. “I shall see you very soon, Persephone. Until then.”
With that, he left the room without so much as a backward glance. This time, the lump in my throat wasn’t the work of some misplaced pity I had for a now-dead servant, useful as he once was. Nor was it the result of a hallucination (for what else could that castle, lake and woman have been but a vision?). No, the bulge making its way up my throat was sadness, mixed with a bit of fear. It was the very real reaction to the way my king, my fellow conspirator, my lover, now looked at me. It was the expression of someone who was… bored!
And when someone such as Alaire became bored, it did not bode well for the future of the subject in question. I lay back in bed, the unknown voice in my subconscious screaming unintelligible obscenities at me. As I tasted the blood again in my mouth, I did something I had not done in over two centuries: I began to cry very real tears.
“… But I remembered him…”
- Dante’s Inferno
FOUR
Persephone
I was standing on the shore of the lake again. The castle stood out against the backdrop of the setting sun. The water was calm as death and clear as glass. I was naked and a wet breeze lashed my body, yet I felt no chill. In the distance, mountains rose above the lake like impenetrable battlements.
Remembering her eyes, I looked for the woman in the mud. She was nowhere to be seen, so I began to walk. The grass tickled the soles of my feet and the wind whistled past my ears. But beyond the breeze, there was no other sound.
After some time, I caught a glimpse of someone in the distance, kneeling and brooding. The figure was massive, slabs of muscle overlapping one another all along the length of his frame. His hair was close-cropped and he too was naked. I began to run toward him. Why? I did not know, but a terror suddenly filled me.
Though I was still some distance from him, I could see what the man was doing. He was kneeling over the girl in the mud, only now some of the mud had been cleaned away from her. Her breasts and womanhood were uncovered, and she was exposed to him as well as the elements. His hand was nestled between her thighs. Where I felt nothing before, the heat between these two suddenly washed over me, as if I were feeling what she felt.
I tried to speak but I could only manage to expel a few squeaks and gasps.
No, this is my body; this is my place, I wanted to yell but I had no voice.
I tried to move closer but I was immobilized. Something slithered up my legs. I looked down and would have screamed if I could have. Vines, ropey and covered in thorns, were working their way up from the ground, lacerating my pale skin as they wound their way around my calves.
I tried to scream again to gain the attention of the burly man or the woman sharing my predicament, but I still had no voice. I flailed my hands, kicked my legs, and jerked my body. But the vines held fast, and the thorns cut into me even deeper. They were now at my waist, and the cuts bled red drops among the strands of greenery.
Please make this stop, I silently pleaded but to whom I made my plea, I was not certain.
At last, the vines halted their progress. They did not fall away or squeeze me tighter, but simply remained where they stopped. The man, meanwhile, had mounted the woman in the ground and now was preparing to enter her. A terrible jealousy overcame me, and my own burning rage nearly scorched away the plants that held me still.
“No,” I was finally able to whisper. “No!” I repeated, the word coming out a little louder this time.
The man stopped his initial push and sat up, twisting his head almost fully around. I finally recognized him: Tallis Black. His eyes were empty orbs of blackness and inky blood frothed from his mouth as he prepared to violate the woman in th
e mud.
“R’lease meh!” he yelled.
Screaming, I sat straight up in my bed. The sheets clung to my sweating body and my hands clawed at my legs, trying to tear away vines that were no longer there.
“Saxon!” I screamed.
I threw my sheets away, hoping for some relief from the discomfort of snaking, pointy plants I could still feel holding me in place.
“SAXON!” I yelled once more, my throat burning with the effort. Tears ran down my face. I needed something, but I had no idea what it could be.
“Sax…” The name died on my lips. “You’re dead.”
My head began pounding with images of castles, crushed skulls, creeping vines, Tallis-fucking-Black’s bloody face; his eyes orbs of infinite darkness.
I must know what I witnessed in my sleep, I silently resolved to myself.
I decided it wasn’t a mere dream at all but a vision. There was something so real and so true about what I’d seen. But what this vision meant was anyone’s guess…
Actually, there was one person in the castle who could do better than just guess. He could explain it. I got out of my bed and wrapped myself in a mink shawl before marching down to the tower cells.
When I entered the dank, freezing cell, I felt what might have been a stab of pity for the wasted man that was once the Master of the Underground City. Tallis was no more than a shell of his former self. His body had withered worse than I had ever seen it. His hair, never as groomed as Alaire’s, was lengthy and matted. His muscles, while still impressive, were slack and he showed clear signs of malnourishment.
I tried to recall how long it was since I’d seen him last. Certainly I had visited Tallis since the time Alaire removed Donnchadh from him using sanctioned magic granted by Afterlife Enterprises? Then again, when had that happened? How many dinners and long nights alongside Alaire had I enjoyed whilst Tallis Black’s blood flowed through me, worming its way into my soul?
But, no, I had visited Tallis quite recently. When I was wearing the emerald dress…or wait… was it the sheer black frock? Yes, yes; that was correct. I was wearing the black one and then later, the emerald…
“Blasted hellscape, curse this place and its evil charms,” I said aloud. Time moved strangely here and played with my mind, like shadows playing with ones eyes. Even I, the Underground City Queen, was not immune to its bedeviled ways.
Somewhere closeby, the tiny Neanderthal was snoring. I shouldn’t have been surprised to find the Angel—known as Bill or some other peasant name—still residing in the next cell over. I only wished for a more permanent solution to remove the angel from the situation completely. The little rodent had suffered incredibly at the hands of Alaire’s demonkin. I personally participated at times. But he remained firm in his devotion to “Lily,” the woman who once claimed this body and the Bladesmith as her own.
Well, now she could no longer claim either. That cheery thought improved my mood substantially.
“Tallis,” I whispered, hoping not to wake the oafish angel. The last thing I wanted to bother with was his ridiculous conversation. “Tallis Black, you will wake for your queen this instant.”
“Ah ‘av nae Queen.”
The body chained to the wall didn’t move. In fact, it didn’t so much as even flinch. Tallis’s voice sounded harsh, almost guttural.
“I am not here to discuss your feelings regarding the current state of the Underground City’s monarchy,” I retorted, bringing myself up to my full, impressive height. “I have questions and you will answer them.”
“O’ course, besom.” His words reeked with spite. I gritted my teeth at being called “besom.” I hated that nickname, for I knew it was the name that he gave to her. I understood that it meant “troublesome woman,” something Tallis Black seemed to believe of every woman he encountered in his long, unnatural life. And yet he only called her the appellation, a fact I found troublesome.
“I’m having… visions,” I stated while trying to think of what else to call them. “I’m also experiencing feelings I shouldn’t be: pity, sadness, fear...”
I practically spat the last word out as if it were an obscenity. I wanted to use the anger behind it as a shield for what was happening to me. But despite that, I felt my eyes growing wet. I squeezed my hands into fists, focusing only on keeping the tears back.
“Whit kind o’ visions?” Tallis asked, his head moving slightly as he faced me.
“I’ve seen things I… can’t explain. They mean nothing to me and yet they are as vivid as though I pulled them straight from my memory.” I took a deep breath. “Visions of a castle, a lake, mountains as high as the clouds,” I started as I pulled the memories forward. “A woman covered in mud…”
Tallis jerked when I mentioned the woman, his chains rattling. The angel snorted and groaned something about a beast called “Skeletorhorn” and “lawsuits,” which I didn’t understand. Then he began snoring again.
“The woman, whit did the lass look like?” Tallis asked, suddenly much more interested.
That was when I realized I never fully saw her appearance…as if I were afraid to look too closely. “The mud covered too much of her to make out her basic characteristics,” I started as a memory came back. “But she had green eyes and red hair over her nether region.” In the half dark of the cell, it looked as if Tallis’s hands were beginning to flex. “Does that mean anything to you?” I asked, doing my best to strike an imperious tone, hoping to hide how apprehensive I was regarding his answer.
“Did anythin’ happen in the visions?”
I shook at the memory of Tallis mounting the submerged woman, the tar-like blood leaking from his mouth, his empty black holes for eyes...
“I saw… you,” I breathed. “You were preparing to take the woman in the mud. Your eyes were pitch black and the same black blood poured from your mouth.”
Tallis did not say anything for several moments. He did not shift nor flex nor twitch; he just sat chained to the wall. After some time, he began to laugh, but it was a deep and ugly sound. I scoffed at his merriment, which only seemed to invigorate him all the more. The chuckle turned into a deep, lively, even violent guffaw that echoed through the entire tower and settled deep into my bones. How the angel managed to sleep through that unholy sound, I could not begin to guess.
Tallis’s entire wasted body shook with his howling laughter. I began to wonder if he had taken temporary leave of his sanity. Eventually, the cackling turned into coughing spasms and his strained body began to fail him once more.
After recovering from his fit, Tallis wheezed and said: “Och aye, besom, ye’ve gone an’ doon it now.”
“What does that mean?” I demanded, growing angry with his riddles, and his ridicule and mostly the fact that I still wanted him.
Tallis’s head rose for the first time since I entered the tower. His face was haggard and thin with a filthy beard. But his eyes captured mine. His eyes infuriated me. His midnight blue gaze sparkled with too much life for someone caught in his predicament.
“Explain yourself!” I screeched at him.
He laughed again.
“Tell me why you’re laughing!” I insisted.
The smile died from his lips and he faced me with a stone expression.
“Ye have Doonchadh in ye!”
“Oh let it not displease thee…”
- Dante’s Inferno
FIVE
Persephone
Four Days Later
The knife shimmered in the flickering flame of the low torch light.
Tallis was still chained to the wall, but the key in my hand might soon change that. My muscles tensed. Even in his weakened state, he could still easily overpower me with just one freed arm.
And I was just a few steps away from him.
His stink, coming from the collected offal of his captivity, which clung to his body like glue, assaulted my nose. The odor was as sharp as a knife’s blade. But I wondered if his stench were the source, or my continued des
ire for him that truly made me want to vomit. Preferably, all over him.
It is a trap, you foolish girl, my internal voice—not that of the intruder’s—pressed me in an attempt to stop this madness. You know he just aims to escape.
But what choice did I have left? The visions—no, they were nothing so benign—the nightmares were becoming a daily occurrence since I first told Tallis about them a few days earlier. And it wasn’t just the castle, Tallis and the buried woman I was now seeing. Memories of my vessel’s former life were frequently bleeding into my sleeping moments as well. And each dream was more vivid than the last. The very thought of enduring one more night of such a psychic assault was more than even I could bear.
Alaire had been away on business for the last few days, so I managed to keep all of this from him. Of course, I suspected his watchers were likely reporting my unusual behavior, and perhaps I wasn’t being as discreet as I might have hoped. The knowledge that Alaire could show up at any moment also spurred my desire to see my desperate plan through. And quickly.
I needed to rid myself of this toxic spirit that called itself Donnchadh immediately. Yes, the irony of my situation was not lost on me. After all these centuries of lusting after Donnchadh’s strength and immortality, all I wanted now was to be well and truly rid of him. I wanted nothing more than his incessant, insidious voice that taunted me at every turn to cease for eternity. And now these dayscapes and foreign memories that haunted me with their vivid detail—I wanted the whole lot of them to disappear! Forever! And like it or not, Tallis Black was the only way for such a happy outcome to happen. I had no doubts that I would find another opportunity to live forever, likely with Alaire’s help, but only if he knew nothing about what I was doing this night…
The elaborate ritual I prepared in Tallis’s cell was testament to that firm belief. The aforementioned set-up included wax candles burning in a circle around the two of us. On the periphery of the candles stood plates of bones and devoured fruit and vegetables stacked high next to the Druid. He explained that the ritual would be very taxing and he doubted he possessed the physical strength it required to survive it. So over the last few days, I increased his rations to ensure he would be strong enough when the time came.
